I find myself in need of money again. The money sink is desperately, disappointingly mundane, made worse by someone having tremendously fucking inconsiderate timing. It is not as exciting as blackmail nor as romantic as a heroin habit, so literally any reason you fill in here will be more interesting than what is actually going on. I hate this part like hell, and it is making me have nightmares. Thurs/Fri were blocked off for my contract work, and it is not an immediate life-or-death matter, so I literally refuse to deal with this at all until business hours on Monday.

I do not think anyone quite understands the kind of budget I am working with here. I make about $800/mo with my permanent contract work. My rent is nearly $500/mo, which is quite good for Medford/Somerville. Money for other things -- like, say, food -- comes out of my freelancing, which depends entirely on people reading the résumés and comps I give them, and then actually calling me back. I frequently have to drop phone service for a couple of days a month, because it's pay-as-you-go, telephones are one of my least favorite things in the entire world, and it is more important to not quite actually starve.

Anyone who feels like yelling at me for "letting" myself be poor can shut the fuck up. "Get a job, any job" is not an option for me. Since the end of the last contract work that involved having to go into an office and work a 6-8 hour day ended, I have experienced, for the first time in my life, a long stretch of time where I have never had to force myself to work while having a hysterical crying breakdown. I don't always really want to do work, because not-working is almost always more fun than working, but at no point have I had to cancel a gig because I was in no psychological state to be out in public. I get that everyone has to go into work a total wreck every once in a while -- pets die, people get sick, relationships end, and you don't generally get much if any vacation time for that. But morning schedules and continual command performances in front of other people fuck me up to the point where if I cannot find a way to change the situation I will eventually just stop functioning. I cannot do it. I do not have enough spoons. 

I did not work -- in the sense of not being employed, and also in the sense of feeding the pets but the crawling back into bed before I fed me -- for about a year once, when I attempted to keep going to a job that I desperately needed, after it suddenly changed from night shift where I talked to about three people on staff, to early morning shift where one of my coworkers quit taking his meds and took it out on me. It involved multiple trips to the emergency room, from whence I returned with prescriptions for things like Xanax. It was not fun. I refuse to do that again.

Every time I have tried to hold down a standard 9-5 job has ended in disaster. I think I should be learning something from this.

"I hate mornings and customers" does not seem to be a disability in the eyes of the establishment, so I cop a lot of shit from people who don't understand why I can't just go out and work a McJob for a while, even if I loathe it. I always consider putting them in touch with the psych nurse who did my first assessment at FMC, until I remember that the mental health people there, for excellent reasons, do not give out surnames. 

I'm working on setting up an Etsy store for knit gear. It isn't much, but if I didn't knit things I'd go mad anyway, so I've already got a pile of scarves I never wear, and more rat things that haven't even been used. I've given up on writing the autobiography. I've already lived through all that once and I hated a lot of it the first time. I'm working on something else, though; I'm not a total loss.

If you are ever going to be this poor, there are three things I recommend you try to keep around at all times. One is some kind of diphenhydramine, generic Benadryl or Unisom or some such. It is otherwise goddamned difficult to get any sleep when it's ramen or nothing and you just can't stand any more ramen, and you're always on edge, waiting for someone else to phone you up and demand money you haven't got. Two is a heating pad. You can make them quite cheaply by filling a little pillow full of rice. Microwave for three minutes or so; it stays warm for a decently long time. When you're not eating enough from a combination of poverty and freaking out, you are always fucking cold, and it's nice to occasionally be able to feel your toes again. Three is a valid library card. It gives you a place to go and things to do when you can't stand staring at your apartment anymore, and want to be un-pester-able for a while.

Comments

  1. Dropped a little on your Donate account. Will try to add a bit more payday-ish.

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    1. You are very kind. Thank you.

      What I actually need is for the patronage system to come back into fashion. I would be quite happy to take stupid amounts of money in exchange for giving someone the right to brag at boring parties about how s/he "discovered" my genius. As it stands, the people who think my writing is worthwhile are all in the same boat I am, and their parties are never boring enough to reach the point where talking about what you throw money at serves to liven things up. Ah well.

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